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HauntedIllinois.com's

2017 Basement Of The Dead Review

Basement Of The Dead42 W New York StreetAurora, IL 60506

Basement of The Dead is just past the casinos in Aurora. There was also a giant tent set up by the corner to help point out where to go.

Wait Entertainment:

They had not one, but two chainsaw people chasing people around, as well as a creature on stilts that could sneak up behind you among other actors lurking about. There was also a band playing, but I am not sure if they will be there every weekend.

Admission:

General $25 - VIP - $45

Parking:

There is street parking available in the area

Event Length:

Basement of the Dead: 12 MinutesShattered 3-D: 5 Minutes

LPR:

LPR Score = 1.972

LPR stands for Length/Price Ratio. It represents perceived value of an event, by
comparing
length vs price of admission. Higher numbers represent more value per dollar. Actual
quality and/or entertainment value of an event are not factors in this calculation.
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to see how this event compares to others
visited this year by the staff of HauntedIllinois.com.

Scare Factor:

Very High

Crowd Control:

Not good, about halfway through the group behind us caught up to us, and by the end, we had caught up to the group in front of us.

Summary:

This house is one of the loudest and darkest houses in the area, when you first get in, you start down a staircase in to a true basement of the building. Instead of having vinyl walls on the side, they have it on the ceiling, which makes getting to the basement that much more difficult.

Once you are down there, another set of vinyl walls greets you. Once you get through that, you then go in to a round, hall of mirrors room that ends up spinning on you, adding to the confusion of where to go.

That leads in to a hospital/morgue, which is one of the creepiest settings I have seen. The dissecting room was really gross. Very dark, very uncomfortable, and very scary. Most of the rest of the rooms are set up like a factory/warehouse maze, set up to be dark and have both people and animatronic creatures pop out at you with loud noises and blinding lights. There was a great hallway set up like a padded room, which needed the padding because the walls seemed to collapse at the top, closing off part of the top of the hallway. There are many twists and turns, and shocks throughout. They had a path that had giant animatronic spiders pop out at you that made everyone in our group jump. They also had a great doll room, which was very disturbing to several people in our group.

There is a great dark maze, with some very blinding strobes, which leads in to a church setting. The actors in the room made us sit down, which made me think they were about to go in to something, but then the group behind us came in, so they kicked us out. This then leads in to another dark maze that has some great pop outs. I am not sure how the actors spend all that time in the dark, ready to jump and scare you. Again, I had a problem with the group behind me bumping in to me, and I was the last of my group. We also at this point caught up to the group in front of us, which I feel hindered the actor's ability to scare all of us. This left me disappointed, because the whole end of the house is one of the best dark mazes anyone has a chance to go through.

The second house, Shattered, is a 3-D house with a twist. Normally, you have the 3-D glasses on with blacklights on as overhead lights for the house. Here, the house is pitch black, and you carry a blacklight flashlight. Also, as a warning, the whole house is just clowns. I did have a problem with the first clown, who seemed to have some terrible body odor, which took me out of the experience. The rest of clowns were amazing, they are very good at staying still, you do not know which ones are real or statues, until it is too late. And they will follow you quietly throughout the house and scare you when you are distracted by something else. One of the areas had giant balloons hanging down, instead of heads or bodies, which I thought was a nice touch, and kept with the whole clown motif. They did have a whole area covered in dots, which turned in to a 45 degree angle maze room, which worked really well. They also had another doll room, which was even creepier due to the clown aspect of it. On the plus side, we had a smaller group, and at least in this house we did not run in to any of the group before us, nor did the group behind catch up to us.

I was a little let down with Basement of the Dead because, due to the size of the crowd, they pushed people through, and the end result was not as a scary of a house as it should have been. It is still very dark, very loud, and very scary, and I would still recommend it as a great house with some great twists and turns.